TAG | vulnerability

“HONG KONG — The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign technology companies that do billions of dollars’ worth of business in China.”

Security researcher Emil Kvarnhammar of TrueSec announced the discovery of a new vulnerability in Mac OS X from 10.8.5 though the current 10.10.

The attack is against a unix utility called “sudo” which allows commands to run as the “root” user (which has absolute power on the system). Normally a user with admin privileges needs to type in their password and approve the running of these tasks, but this attack bypasses the user authentication step.

They have not released details on the vulnerability to give Apple time to issue a fix. In the mean time, it looks like you can protect yourself by making your your normal account is not an admin account. (more…)

A couple of months ago researcher Karsten Nohl demonstrated a security vulnerability that he called BadUSB. Basically it was a demonstration that an attacker could alter the firmware in a USB device to automatically attack anything it was plugged in to. At the recent DerbyCon, researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson demonstrated their version of the attack and released sample code for how to implement it. This really opens pandora’s box.

The problem here is that this is not actually a bug in USB. It is exactly how USB is designed to work (as insecure as that might be), and changing that behavior is likely to break a lot of other things. A good and effective fix for this vulnerability is probably years away.

In the mean time, take great care with USB devices. My suggestion is to never use another person’s USB device. Don’t use USB to transfer files, and make sure that any USB devices you do use are obtained directly in unopened packaging. There could still be exploits introduced in manufacturing, but at least you are as safe as reasonably possible.

This and many other articles are relaying the information that governments are encouraging users to move to Chrome, Firefox, or Safari until this Microsoft Internet explorer bug is fixed. The vulnerability seems to have been in every version of IE since 6 through the current version 11. It is a remote exploitation vulnerability, so attackers can use it to run arbitrary code on your computer, effectively “owning” it. There are some work arounds within IE that may prevent the attack, but for now it is much safer and easier to simply move to a different browser.

It is important to remember that using a VPN like Anonymizer Universal does NOT provide any protection against this kind of attack. This is an attack directly against the browser using the content you have “requested”. The attack is launched from the site you are visiting, so the hostile content would flow through the VPN unhindered.

Anonymizer strongly encourages its users to move to Firefox, Safari, or Chrome, at least until this problem is resolved.

Apple released an update for Mac OS X 10.9 fixing the serious GOTO FAIL SSL vulnerability. This update appears to resolve the problem for The Safari browser, and many other Apple applications that use SSL/TLS.

If you use a Mac, make sure you install this update ASAP. Go to Software Update and you should see the update available.